Opinion
Editorial

PoV: Remembering Canada's fallen

Remembrance Day services across Canada were well attended on Tuesday, and that was also the case in Chatham-Kent. The 11 a.m. observance at the cenotaph in downtown Chatham was packed with hundreds of people, a far cry from the relatively small crowd that has attended in past years.

Elsewhere within the municipality, larger crowds were also evident at community observances.

There has been an outpouring of affection and recognition for Canada’s military personnel since the tragic deaths three weeks ago of two soldiers, one in Quebec and one on Parliament Hill. The Royal Canadian Legion’s annual poppy campaign was a reflection of this phenomenon; indeed, it looked as though the poppy supply in Canada would be exhausted.

Such Canadian patriotism has always existed, but for many it has never been as fully and as publicly expressed as it was on Tuesday and in the days leading up to this year’s Remembrance Day observance.

Part of the reason is the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War and the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War. But it mostly comes down to the deaths of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincente and Corp. Nathan Cirillo – not on foreign soil, but on Canadian soil.

Their deaths, tragically only days apart, brought home the battle and conflict that every Canadian soldier has faced or endured, but mostly overseas and in a distant land. Canadians responded as a people and a nation in their collective grief for the gallant service provided by Vincente and Cirillo, as the sombre gravity of their military service and the service of so many other Canadian men and women was graphically exposed last month.

Speaking at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Tuesday, Governor General David Johnston spoke eloquently about the sacrifice of our military personnel, and said: “Freedom without peace is agony, and peace without freedom is slavery, and we will tolerate neither. This is the truth we owe our dead.”

Making reference to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Johnston added: “We don’t know his name. His is our unknown solider. In anonymity he honours all Canadians who died and may yet die for their country.”

Indeed, on Tuesday most of us stood together as a nation in remembrance, honouring those who have gone before us into battle and whose deaths marked a sacrifice that can’t and shouldn’t be forgotten.